


You Are My Sunshine

by 0bviousLeigh



Series: The Three Lives of Kurosaki Ruri [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Gen, Speculation, Various Minor OCs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 15:50:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9392225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bviousLeigh/pseuds/0bviousLeigh
Summary: Shun finds a baby in the woods, and decides that she's supposed to be his sister now.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title/ lyrics from the children's song "You are my sunshine".

_You'll never know dear, how much I love you_  
_Please don't take my sunshine away_

* * *

 

Shun has always had a habit of wandering off. No matter how much the grownups, Yuka, Mei, and Takashi, try to keep their eyes on him, he always manages to slip away somehow. He’s not trying to run away, he always goes back, he just likes to be alone. The group home is noisy, and the other kids always want to play with Shun. He’s the youngest, youngest permanent resident anyway, and even though he’s not a baby, the girls want him to be their baby when they play house. Shun’s been wrapped up in a baby blanket and plopped in a doll stroller more times in his life than he can count. Whenever real babies come over, they don’t stay long, and the grownups don’t let the kids play house with them.

Sometimes all Shun wants is to be left alone, and most of the time he can only be alone when he leaves the house. He never goes far, most of the time he explores the woodsy area behind the group home. He builds little tents out of sticks and leaves, he finds interesting rocks, once he found a rabbit skeleton, but he wasn’t allowed to keep the skull even though it was really, really cool. Very rarely, Shun finds duel monsters cards. Some of them are bent or dirty, and they’re never really good cards, but Shun keeps them and hopes that someday he’ll be able to build a deck with cards he’s found; unless he gets adopted first, and his parents buy him cards.

Sometimes other kids—kids at the playground—tease Shun for not having parents. They think being an orphan is a bad thing, but Shun’s never felt like it was a bad thing. He had parents once, though he can’t remember them. Once Shun asked Takashi about his parents. Takashi told him that they died when he was a few months old, and even though they didn’t have family to look after Shun, they had prepared things for him for when he got older.

Shun wasn’t the only one with dead parents, most of the children he lived with had dead parents. A few even had parents who were in jail. Most of the kids missed their moms and dads, but Shun didn’t. They said Shun was lucky, he was too young to miss them.

But that wasn’t exactly true—Shun did miss someone. At least, he thought he did. Shun once asked an older girl what it felt like to miss someone, and she said it was like having pain in your chest, and it never went away; it was like turning to tell someone something, but they weren’t there anymore. Sometimes when Shun was alone, had had those feelings. Sometimes he would walk by himself with his hand out and curled around air, like he was holding someone else’s hand. But he never thought about holding a grownups hand, he always imagined holding a little brother or sister’s hand. Sometimes he dreamed that he had a brother or sister, and he was always sad when he woke up from those dreams.

Shun asked once, if he had a brother or sister, but the grownups always said no, it was just Shun. They said he could have a brother or sister someday, if he got adopted, and until then he could think of all the kids in the home as his brothers and sisters. But it wasn’t the same. Shun wondered if he was supposed to have a sibling, but maybe they died, too.

 

On a nice day, when Shun’s supposed to be taking a nap, he slips out of his bedroom and sneaks down the stairs, and out the back door. It’s too nice to be taking a nap, he’s not done playing outside. Shun darts out the gate and into the woods behind the house. He runs deeper into the trees, until he can’t see the house anymore. He kicks some leaves aside and sits down on the ground, and he pulls his cards out of his pocket. He lays them on the ground and pretends he’s dueling, calling out attacks that he makes up on his own—he can’t read what’s written on the cards, after all.

After a few minutes, Shun suddenly starts shivering. He’s confused—it’s not that cold out, it’s pretty warm in fact, why is he shivering? And he has a weird feeling in his tummy, like he gets when the older boys tell scary stories. Suddenly, Shun doesn’t want to be alone in the forest. He scoops up his cards and stands up, and then a bright light suddenly bursts into the forest. Shun cries out and he falls backwards, hands covering his face. The light fades, but Shun keeps his face covered until he hears a tiny sound, like a cat meowing.

Shun uncovers his face, but he doesn’t see a cat. Instead he sees a little pile of white cloth lying a few steps away from him, right where the light appeared. The sound seems to be coming from the cloth. Shun crawls toward the bundle and pulls at the cloth. He gasps—there’s a baby inside the bundle! The baby’s face is red and it’s crying, it sounds scared. He scoops the baby into his arms. Since the home sometimes gets babies for a little while, Shun knows how to hold one. He keeps the baby’s head in the curve of his elbow, and supports it’s bottom. He rocks the baby back and forth, and after a while it stops crying.

Shun sits and unwraps the baby from the cloth. It’s not wearing any clothes, or even a diaper, so he can see that it’s a girl. She’s holding a pretty bracelet, but when Shun tries to take it, the baby starts crying again, so he lets her hold on to it, and he wraps her up again. She stops crying once more, and looks up at Shun. Her eyes are really big, and really blue, and she doesn’t have much hair. She’s got to be really young; the last time Shun saw a baby this tiny, he had just been born a few days ago.

Shun clears his throat. “Hi, baby,” he says quietly. “Where did you come from?”

He doesn’t expect an answer of course, but as soon as he finishes speaking, the baby smiles at him. Her whole face seems to light up, she lets out a little sound and wriggles slightly in his arms. Shun smiles back at her, and he giggles. She’s so cute!

Shun looks around the woods, but there’s no one there but the two of them, and this baby definitely wasn’t here before the flash of light. Did the light bring her? But that can’t be possible, Shun’s three but he’s seen a lot of babies in his life, he knows they have to come from somewhere. Don’t they?

Maybe this baby is special. Maybe she’s different. Maybe she’s…

“Mine?” Shun wonders out loud. Hasn’t he always felt like he was missing someone? Maybe he was missing her. Maybe his parents sent him this baby.

“Are you my sister?” Shun asks the baby. She seems to smile even more, and she never takes her eyes off of Shun’s face. Shun’s never met a baby who stared at him for so long. Maybe she is supposed to be his. Maybe she already loves him.

Shun leans close to the baby’s face. “Do you love me?” He asks. The baby makes a gurgling noise, and Shun takes it as a yes. He kisses her head. “I love you, too,” he says. It’s the truth, somehow he just knows that he loves her. She’s going to be his baby sister.

Shun stands up and starts walking, carefully making his way through the woods. The baby doesn’t cry, and she keeps staring at him. Shun wishes he could stare back, but he has to be careful about where he walks. He finally makes it back to his house, and he knocks on the back door, which locks from the outside. The door opens and Yuka frowns at him.

“Where have you—” She gasps. “Shun, where did that baby come from?!” She shouts.

Shun hushes her. “Don’t yell, you’ll scare her.”

Yuka bends down. “Shun, I will only ask you this once more. Where did she come from?”

“I found her,” Shun says proudly. “She was all by herself and I found her. She’s mine now.”

Yuka closes her eyes. “Christ, give me strength,” she says. She stands up and ushers Shun inside. She makes him hand over his baby sister, and she puts a diaper on her and dresses her in a onesie. She takes the bracelet and looks at it while the baby cries, until Shun yells at Yuka to give the bracelet back. Yuka does, but then she says that they have to call the police.

“Why?” Shun asks.

“Because it’s against the law to leave a baby alone,” Yuka says. “Where exactly did you find her, can you show me?”

“But she doesn’t have parents!” Shun cries, “She’s like me! She’s supposed to be here, we have to help her!”

“We will,” Yuka says, but like she’s not paying attention—she’s on the phone.

Shun clings to her leg and shakes it. “Yuuuuuka, she’s my baby!”

“What baby?” Mei asks, coming into the room.

After that, everyone comes into the room, and they all want to know about the baby, they all want to hold her, take her bracelet away and look at it, and they’re all talking. The baby starts crying, and Shun snatches the bracelet away from one of the older girls and hands it back to the baby. She stops crying, and Shun glares around the room full of people.

“STOP BOTHERING MY BABY SISTER!” He screams.

“Sister?” The kids repeat.

There’s a knock on the front door. Yuka answers and comes back with some police officers.

Shun stomps his feet and grabs one of the officer’s hands. “Mister, these people are making my sister uncomfortable!”

Yuka covers her face. “Shun, inside voice please…”

But Shun foregoes his inside voice. In fact, he foregoes a lot of things in the upcoming weeks. As more and more people try to figure out where the baby came from and ask Shun who left the baby in the woods, Shun insists over and over that she’s his. He tells a few lies, or simply leaves out the truth when he tells people how he found the baby. He doesn’t tell anyone about the flash of light, instead he says that he was walking and saw a pile of cloth, and he thought there was a cat in it. The baby’s cries do sound kind of like a cat. For a while Shun calls her “kitty,” but after about a week he comes up with a name for her.

“She’s my sister,” Shun tells a nurse at the hospital, where the baby is getting booster shots, “I’m going to name her Ruri.”

“That’s a pretty name,” the nurse says. “How did you come up with it?”

“Mei helped me,” Shun says, pointing to his foster mom. “I said I wanted to give her a name that matched her eyes. The kanji means ‘lapis lazuli’. And Mei told me that in old times, babies that were named after gems were protected from evil spirits.”

“What a thoughtful name,” the nurse says. “You put a lot of work into naming Ruri.”

Shun feels proud to hear that. He also likes the bit about Ruri being protected from evil spirits. He’s kind of afraid that the light will come back and take her away, just like it brought her, and he doesn’t want that. She’s his sister.

 

It’s been two months since Shun found Ruri. At one point, Takashi and Yuka said that Shun would have to let her go back to her parents if the police found them, but Shun isn’t afraid of that. He knows that Ruri doesn’t have parents to be found. He’s a little ashamed that he’s happy about that, but Ruri is his baby sister, so it must be okay.

Shun watches Ruri while she sleeps. Sometimes he sings to her, sometimes he just looks at her. She’s so pretty and cute. He’s been so much happier since she came to live with him. He doesn’t sneak away to be alone anymore, because he doesn’t want to be alone, he wants to be with Ruri.

After Ruri’s nap, Yuka takes her and Shun to a place called “central.” Shun’s heard the grownups talk about it before, it’s an important place. It’s a place where moms and dads adopt kids.

At central, Shun is introduced to a nice looking man and woman—Reina and Jun—a husband and wife, he hears Yuka say. Shun hides behind Yuka’s legs and stays quiet, until Yuka asks if the man and woman want to hold Ruri.

“No!” Shun cries then, standing between Yuka and the strangers. “She’s my sister, you can’t give her away!”

“Oh honey,” Reina says, “We won’t take her away from you, I promise.”

Shun looks between her and the door. He moves out of the way, but in front of the door, so they can’t run off with Ruri.

Reina sits on the floor while she hold Ruri. Shun’s baby sister has gotten a lot bigger, and she moves a lot more. She also tries to grab things, and she grabs Reina’s hair and giggles. It makes Shun jealous when Ruri smiles at anyone that’s not him.

“She’s perfect,” Reina says. She looks up at Shun. “I heard you found her, and named her.”

“She’s my sister,” Shun says again.

Reina nods, and Jun sits on the floor, too.

“Shun, can you tell us about her?” Jun asks. “And yourself. We’d love to know more about both of you.”

Shun starts talking, and they listen to him. They don’t interrupt, or tell him to stop lying, like some people have. Shun moves closer to them, an eventually he sits down across from them. He doesn’t tell them about the light, but he tells them that he loves Ruri a lot, and he’s not lonely now that he has her. He tells them that he feed her bottles, helps change her diapers, and he sings to her.

“I bet you sing really well,” Reina says. “What’s her favorite song?”

Shun smiles, and he starts to sing. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”

Ruri stares at Shun, and when the song is over she lets out a happy squeal and holds out her arms to him. Reina puts Ruri in Shun’s lap, and Shun hugs her and kisses her cheek.

Reina looks like she’s going to cry. “Are you sad?” Shun asks her.

She shakes her head, and Jun puts his arms around her. “I’m not sad,” Reina says. “I’m…very happy. Sometimes people cry when they’re happy.”

“Why are you so happy?” Shun asks.

Reina smiles. “Because you and Ruri are so wonderful.”

Shun feels like he has butterflies in his stomach. “Are you…do you want to be a mom and dad?”

The adults nod. Shun tightens is grip on Ruri. “Ruri’s mom and dad?” He asks quietly. He’s heard people say that nobody adopts older kids.

“Not just Ruri’s mom and dad,” Jun says. “Your mom and dad, too.”

Shun gasps. “Really?! Me too?”

“Of course,” Reina says. “You’re brother and sister, aren’t you? We would love to adopt both of you.”

Shun scoots across the floor and wedges himself between the two of them. “Then we should practice,” he says, “You should hold both of us, not just Ruri.”

They laugh. Jun holds Ruri, and Reina pulls Shun into her lap. She hugs him tightly, and Shun closes his eyes. It’s nice, to be held. He feels warm, and safe. It would be nice to feel like this all the time.

After a while, Shun and Ruri switch places. Jun hugs Shun, he ruffle’s Shun’s hair and asks Shun what he likes to do for fun. Shun says he duels, and Reina and Jun both show him their own decks. They sit on the floor for a long time, taking turns holding Shun and Ruri, and talking about their cards. They also tell Shun that they have a big house with a yard, and a big fish tank. They like going for walks on hiking trails, and they like reading. The more they talk, the more Shun likes them. He would be very happy if they did adopt him.

 

Shun learns that it takes time for someone to be adopted. He and Ruri meet Reina and Jun a lot more over the next few weeks. Each time, they bring presents for Shun (coloring books, crayons, and card packs) and Ruri (blankets, pacifiers, and baby toys). They show Shun pictures of their house and fist tank, and of a room that they say will be his when they adopt him. They show him Ruri’s room too, and Shun panics.

“But I want to be with Ruri!”

“You can,” Reina says, “But if you ever want your own room, you can sleep there.”

“I always stay with her,” Shun says, “In case…so I can make sure she doesn’t disappear.”

Reina looks sad. She gives Shun a hug. “Honey, no one is going to disappear. Not Ruri, not me or d—Jun.”

Shun wishes he could call them mom and dad, but he doesn’t want to do that until they take him home with them. Shun’s been told that there’s still a chance they won’t be able to adopt him. He thinks the grownups told him that so he wouldn’t get his hopes up, but they are already up. He just wants to go home.

 

It takes five months, but finally, Shun and Ruri are adopted. They get a mom and dad, and they get a last name.

“Kurosaki Shun and Kurosaki Ruri!” Reina—mom says, “Welcome to your new home!”

Shun runs into the house and straight to the fish tank. Dad tells Shun what kind of fish they are, and Shun starts naming them. Ruri crawls around on the floor and mom shows her a soft blanket filled with baby toys. Dad takes Shun upstairs and shows him his new room, and Shun can look out the window and see the backyard.

“A swing set!” he cries.

“Want to go play on it?” Dad asks.

Shun nods, and they race each other outside.

 

After a few weeks in his new home, Shun stops sleeping in Ruri’s room at night and stays in his own. He’s not afraid that she’ll disappear anymore. Everything is perfect now, Shun has a mom and dad, and a baby sister. He doesn’t need to be lonely or worried anymore, or ever again.

Never, ever again.

Because everything is perfect now.

 

Shun opens his eyes and for a moment, he thinks it was all a dream, and when he takes the blanket off his head, he’ll be in his old room and he’ll smell his dad making breakfast and hear his mom waking Ruri up for school. Ruri will still be here, there will have been no cloaked figure that snatched her away and left Shun feeling like he was falling into a pit of darkness.

But Shun sits up and he’s still trapped in the nightmare. Heartland is in ruins, the sun hasn’t shone in weeks, and Ruri is gone.

Shun grits his teeth and gets to his feet. Today will be the day he finds a way to the Fusion dimension, today will be the day he finds a way to free Ruri from Academia’s clutches. Shun always tells himself that it’s going to be today, because it’s the only way he can keep himself going. He learned a long time ago that his life is better with Ruri in it; there was a reason she appeared in front of him that day, brought to him by a flash of light. He’s not going to let the Fusion dimension take his Ruri, his baby sister, his light, away from him.

He’s going to get her back, one way or another.

**Author's Note:**

> That's that for this series! What did you think of the theories? Which is your favorite?


End file.
